Why did people depend so much on the Famine?

The potato was introduced to Ireland as a lovely garden crop.
By the late seventeenth century it had become really popular all
over Ireland . The main diet still revolved around
Butter,milk and grain products. In the first two decades of the
eighteenth century, it became a base food of the poor, mostly in the winter. The expansion of the ecomny between 1760 and 1815 saw the potato in the diet
of the people and become a staple food .






external image potatoe.jpg